I probably won't be blogging as often this month, because I'll be too busy following college lacrosse.

For those of you who live west of the Appalachians (is it still Tuesday in your time zone?), or north of New York, or south of Maryland, lacrosse is a team sport where players use baskets strapped onto big sticks to toss a ball back and forth, with the ultimate objective of inserting it into the opponent's goal. The ball has the approximate density of the earth's core and travels at a velocity comparable to a 747 at the point of takeoff.

Okay, truth be told: for the next four weeks I'll be wrapping up the first draft of my latest novel. I'm at the point where I need to walk, talk and breathe this book, and for the moment reality is kind of a needless distraction. It's my first novel not set in a contemporary time and place, so it takes more of that imagination stuff than usual to immerse myself into the book.

If you're not a writer and can't understand why I'd have to give up blogging just to finish a novel, then I'll compare it to the final paper/exam period in every college student's life--the time when all other concerns fall to the wayside as you try desperately not to be a complete failure.

If you're not a writer and you've never been to college, then I'll put it this way: we just had to replace our well pump to the tune of--well, let's just say it's not a catchy tune. It wouldn't make the Billboard top 100. Or the top 1,000. Top 1,500? Getting closer. And though blogging fulfills many other purposes, one thing it doesn't do is pay for new well pumps.

Filling in for me here at Seething in the Wilderness will be my husband, radio personalityChristian Ready. He'll begin with a review of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. After which I'll comment on all the parts I disagree with. Feel free to jump in if you've seen the movie, or hope to see the movie, or want to complain about why you can't see the movie, or complain that there is a movie at all.

I'll wrap up with a few observations:

1. Hitchhikers was brilliant, especially when it allowed itself to be its own entity rather than trying to recreate the painful (sorry, but it's true) BBC-TV series.2. Governor Robert "I Sign Your Paychecks, I'll Tell You What to Think" Ehrlich's latest actions make the opening of the opera version of George Orwell's 1984 even more appropriate.3. The Maryland men's lacrosse team beat those goody two-shoes Duke Blue Devils to win the ACC tournament.